


Black Dog

by AstroLass



Series: AstroLass rewrites Season 7 [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Feels, But then all bets are off, Canon Compliant through mid-Season 7, Case Fic, Castiel and Dean Winchester Use Their Words, Depression, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Late Night Conversations, Nightmares, PTSD, Start of a VERY SLOW BURN to Destiel, rating is for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23440774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroLass/pseuds/AstroLass
Summary: It's 2012.  Castiel is dead.  Bobby is dead.  The Leviathans are on the loose.  Sam is having flashbacks to Hell.  Dean and Sam are in Minnesota for a case involving an attack by a mysterious black dog.  Things take a left turn when they meet a woman who claims to be Castiel, brought back to life in a new vessel but without grace or angel powers.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: AstroLass rewrites Season 7 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885492
Comments: 14
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This grew out of a discussion with fellow SPN fans about how, if Castiel were female, Cas and Dean would have been in an admitted relationship on the show for years. I argued that things weren't that easy because, much as we love them, both Cas and Dean are pretty emotionally damaged. An idea wormed its way into my head and here it is. This is the first time I've been brave enough to release fiction writing into the world, so be kind. 
> 
> The title is a reference to the monster of the week, the Led Zeppelin song and the use of the phrase "black dog" as a metaphor for depression.
> 
> Many thanks to my excellent beta readers, Drula and Erika, without whom I would never have been brave enough to let this baby out of the nest.

Dean Winchester hated the smell of hospitals. The combination of nose-burning disinfectant, too many humans crowded into a small space, and various forms of sick had always turned his stomach a little, but his reaction had become even worse since he’d had to stand in a hospital room and watch Bobby die. The effort to keep his stomach from rebelling was so all-consuming that he was barely listening to Sam question the witness to their latest hunt. Two stupid frat boys in Wabanquot, Minnesota had gotten themselves mauled by what they described as a giant glowing black dog, and now here he was, standing in a hospital room, hoping he wouldn’t blow his FBI cover by puking on his shoes. And hoping that he wouldn’t have to put a silver bullet in this dumbass kid who couldn’t have been more than 18. While Sam continued to pepper the kid with questions, Dean patted the various pockets of his fake Fed monkey suit looking for Bobby’s flask, then remembered that he’d left it in the car so he wouldn’t lose it again. He swore under his breath. A drink would really help settle his stomach.

He obviously hadn’t been as quiet as he thought, because Sam stopped his questions and asked, “Everything all right there, Agent Peart?”

“I just need some coffee,” Dean lied. “Can I get you two something?”

Sam’s face said he wanted to give Dean a hard time about being hung over, which he actually wasn’t this time, it was just the damn reek of the hospital. Instead, Sam replied to his question with a prissy “no thank you,” while the kid asked for a bottle of water.

The hospital community room was large and airy enough to let Dean take a full breath without feeling like he wanted to puke. It also had one of those fancy pod coffee machines that made much better coffee than the usual hospital sludge. Dean picked the closest thing he could find to ordinary plain coffee, no fancy flavors or weird names, and drank it black. The vending machine contained only drinks, but he grabbed a packet of crackers from the basket next to the coffee machine and let the food and hot drink work their magic. Stupid to get all worked up like this over a smell, he thought. He was going to have to get over this thing frickin’ quick because hospitals were a constant part of the hunting life. He couldn’t stick Sam with every single victim interview in a hospital.

Dean was fishing in his pockets for change to get the kid his bottle of water when he heard his name – not his latest FBI alias, but a surprised and joyful shout of “Dean!” – from across the community room. He snapped his head towards the door and saw a young woman shake off the arm of a nurse and head right for him, face alight. She was white, medium height for a woman, with long honey brown hair bound up in a sloppy pony tail and truly beautiful blue eyes.

For the life of him, he didn’t recognize her. Dean searched his memory of hunts, hook ups, and schools he’d attended during his wandering youth, but couldn’t place her. Hook up seemed likely – despite the tell-tale thinness and pasty complexion of illness, she appealed to him in all the right ways. Dammit, he might not always remember the names of the women he hooked up with, but he liked to think he remembered their faces. Most of the time.

“Dean!” she said again, then threw her arms around him in a quick, awkward hug before stepping back and staring at him with a disturbing intensity. “You got my messages! ”

Confused, Dean stammered, “I’m sorry, I don’t --”

“Of course! You don’t recognize me like this.” She grimaced at her own mistake, confusing Dean even more. “Dean,” she said, dropping her voice to barely above a whisper, “It’s Castiel.”

Before he could respond, the nurse interrupted. “Come on now Michelle, you need to leave that nice man alone.” The nurse -- an older white woman with her blonde hair in a tight bun and a disapproving frown -- tugged on the woman’s arm as if she were a disobedient toddler. The woman was having none of it.

“I keep telling you that’s not my name,” the woman insisted. “This is Dean. The one I’ve been trying to contact since I woke up.”

The nurse looked at Dean with a pained expression and started to apologize for her patient, but Dean shut her down. “Yes, I’m that Dean.”

“Oh,” the nurse replied, the way she said that one syllable saying everything Dean needed to hear. Nurse Ratched here hadn’t expected anyone her patient talked about to be real, much less standing in front of her. “Well, then, let me take you two back to Michelle’s room. There’s a lot you two need to talk about.”

“No shit, sister,” Dean replied, not caring who heard him swear.

Not surprisingly, her hospital room was in the psych ward. Dean rushed the disapproving nurse out of the room with a message for Sam, ignoring her questions and offers of help, then shut the door behind her.

“Cas, is it really you?” Dean asked, taking the guest chair across from the bed. He honestly wasn’t sure what he wanted the answer to be. “I saw you die – the Leviathans . . . :”

The woman who claimed to be Castiel sat on the edge of the hospital bed, hands folded serenely in her lap. If she wasn’t actually Cas – something Dean was still trying to fit his head around -- she had Cas’s mannerisms and physical quirks down perfectly. The stillness that was so complete it was sort of creepy, as if she weren’t used to making casual, unconscious movements or even having physical body at all. The head tilt. The intense way she locked those blue eyes onto Dean as if he were the most important thing in the room. Even the voice was almost right – only instead of Cas’s bass growl, she sounded like Lauren Bacall asking Bogie if he knew how to whistle.

“I remember sending the souls back to Purgatory. I remember telling you that I would atone for what I’d done . . . then lost control of my vessel, and there was only a horrible slimy blackness surrounding me, swallowing me, suffocating me.” She paused, fishing for words. The average person would have fidgeted or wrung her hands. She was simply still. “After the dark, the next thing I recall is waking up here, in this body, in this hospital, three weeks ago. Because I didn’t know how to find you or Sam, I looked up Singer Salvage Yard and I left messages at Bobby’s voice mail explaining all of this. You must have gotten my messages, or else why are you here?”

“Bobby’s dead. He’s been dead for months.” Dean was impressed with himself that he could say it straight out without his voice breaking.

“Oh, no. I’m so sorry Dean. He was a good friend to you.” She sounded honestly sorrowful, almost humanly so, Dean thought, not at all like the cool, distant angel. He didn’t want to unpack that right now. Or talk about Bobby with someone who might be a shifter or a demon or a Leviathan or some other horrible new trick that the universe was pulling on him.

“Yeah, well, we both know life’s a bitch.” He held a hand up to cut off anything else she might say. “We didn’t get any messages. It’s just dumb luck that we’re here on a hunt. Why the hell are you stuck here in in the Looney Tunes ward instead of zapping yourself back up to Heaven? Or won’t they take you back?” That last bit was mean spirited, but Dean couldn’t regret it.

“I can’t ‘zap’ anywhere. I don’t have my grace. I can’t even hear the other angels. As near as I can tell, I’m essentially human.” Another long searching pause filled the room. Again, she was completely still. “I wasn’t . . . . careful . . . about what I said when I woke up. I told the truth thinking that you or Sam or Bobby would be here in a matter of days at most. Needless to say, these people think I’m insane. Hence my current accommodations.” She moved for the first time since sitting down, waving a hand to show off the tiny hospital room, the bed with visible restraints, the barred windows, the bland blue-grey walls. “I’ve prayed almost non-stop every day, but no one answers. So no, Heaven clearly doesn’t want me back.”

Dean tried to squash a feeling of sympathy. No feelings, he told himself, until he knew whether this was really Cas. “And the meat suit you’re wearing?” he demanded.

“This isn’t a vessel. There’s no one in here but me. This body used to belong to someone named Michelle. Based on what the nurses say, she was in some sort of horrible accident and then was in a coma for a long time. I think she was gone long before I ended up in this body,” she explained. “I have no idea how I got here. I have no idea how I’m not dead.” She hung her head and studied her feet in their ridiculous pink fuzzy hospital slippers for a long time. “I know this is hard to believe. But test me any way you need to, Dean. I am Castiel. And I need your help. I need to get out of this hospital before they never let me leave.”

Dean rubbed a hand across his face and tried to think. Some of her story could be verified. He could run the usual tests of holy water and silver for run of the mill monsters and brand-spanking new Borax test for Leviathans in meat suits. But if this turned out to be Cas, back from the dead _again_ , human and needing his help, could he forgive her enough to give that help? Son of a bitch, why did these moral dilemmas always fall on him? 

Buying himself time to think, Dean asked, “OK, if you’re really Cas, tell me something only Cas would know.”

Thoughtful, she tilted her head in that painfully familiar way and replied, “When I raised you from Hell, I left my handprint on your left arm. I put Enochian sigils on your ribs to hide you from angels. You told me that the first time I teleported you somewhere ‘you didn’t poop for a week’ so you preferred that we drive to Maine to look for Rafael. What more do you need to hear?”

“What’s the very first thing you ever said to me?”

She flashed the faintest hint of a smile. “I tried to talk to you before I took Jimmy Novak as a vessel but only succeeded in causing property damage. The first time we met after I took my vessel, you shot me, then you stabbed me, and Bobby tried to cave in my skull with a crowbar,” she said, telling the story as calmly as if it was an everyday occurrence. “You asked me who I was and I told you that I was Castiel, an Angel of the Lord, the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition.”

“Right in one,” Dean responded, allowing himself a small answering smile. A shifter would have those stolen memories, and probably a Leviathan would too, he thought. But the bland way she talked about them was pure, unadulterated Cas.

“Of course I remember that night, Dean. It was probably the most important night of my entire existence. It was the starting point for all the best and worst things I’ve ever done.” That earnestness was pure Cas as well.

The knock on the door saved them from having to finish the conversation. Sam didn’t wait for Dean to answer, just stuck his head in the door and said, “Hey, uh, let’s talk.”

In the hallway, Sam paced while paging through a file of hospital records. “Hospital administration was more than happy to turn over her file to her ‘cousin’ who happens to be an FBI agent,” he explained. “I didn’t even have to tap dance around why I didn’t know the exact name she was admitted under. Apparently they’ve never heard of patient confidentiality in Wabanquot.”

“So get this, it says here she’s Michelle Swanson, age 29, admitted unconscious and unresponsive four and a half months ago after a car accident that killed her husband and their young son. Soft tissue injuries and fairly serious head trauma. Stayed in a coma, with minimal to no brain activity. She had no other immediate family so the hospital had a lawyer appointed as her guardian. Then all of a sudden, three weeks ago, she woke up with no memory, claiming she was an angel named Castiel.”

“Well, that tracks with her story to me.”

“Huh,” Sam grunted.

“What do you mean, huh?” Dean demanded.

“I just mean . . . huh. It’s weird. If this is really Cas in a new vessel, why has he -- sorry, she -- been sitting here letting them treat her like she’s crazy?” Sam replied. “Why not go back to Heaven or come find us or go literally anywhere else than a psych ward in Minnesota?”

“She says she can’t. No angel mojo.”

“No angel mojo means there’s one less way to prove this is really Cas,” Sam noted.

“For what it’s worth, I believe her. She knows things that only Cas would know, she talks like Cas and she moves like Cas. She even has that same creepy habit of staring at me with those big blue eyes –“

“Blue eyes?” Sam interrupted. “The driver’s license in her file says that Michelle Swanson’s eyes are brown.”

After a trip out to this week’s stolen piece of crap car for supplies – Dean missed his Baby with a physical ache in his chest – Dean dumped holy water and Borax on Probably-Cas’s arm and watched absolutely nothing happen. Sam sliced her leg with a silver knife in a spot that was mostly covered by her hospital pajamas and got no reaction other than honest, red blood. That Probably-Cas winced and grunted in pain at the wound spoke volumes about how human she was now. As an angel, Cas had taken worse damage without batting an eyelash. 

“Satisfied?” Probably-Cas asked, sounding hopeful.

Dean decided to stop dancing around the issue. He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Welcome home, Cas.” 

“Yeah, welcome back,” Sam added, handing Cas gauze and antibiotic cream for the slice on her leg. She looked confused about what to do with them, so Sam took them back and set about patching her up.

“I’d say it’s good to be back, but so far that’s not been the case,” Cas responded. “It’s been confusing. And uncomfortable. Previously having a female vessel was not adequate preparation for the things human females have to go through once a month –“

“And we’re not talking about that,” Dean interrupted, quickly lifting his hand from Cas’s shoulder and looking to Sam for a way out of this conversation.

“Uh, yeah, uh, Dean and I need to go do paperwork if we’re going to get you out of here, and we should do that right now,” Sam said, already halfway out the door.

Sitting in the “Patient Services Area” with the small mound of paperwork the hospital required for them to take custody of their “cousin,” Sam had been tapping his pen against the table just long enough to get on Dean’s nerves. “What?” Dean demanded.

“What do you mean, ‘what’?”

“I know that pen tapping. That is your ‘I am concerned’ pen tapping,” Dean responded as he reached over to grab the pen out of Sam’s hands. “You don’t get this back until you tell me what has you concerned.”

Raking his fingers through his hair, Sam answered, “Doesn’t this all seem a little, I dunno, weirdly convenient to you? We just happen to show up on a random hunt in the same out of the way Minnesota hospital where Cas woke up in a new body? Plus, anyone who knows anything about you knows you’re a sucker for damsels in distress, and, hey look, that new body happens to be female.”

“I am not a sucker –“

“Look, maybe I’m just paranoid because the Leviathans took our faces. Or maybe I’m afraid to take anything at face value while I’m still seeing visions of Hell and Lucifer. Or maybe I’m suspicious of anything good happening to us right now,” Sam continued. “Maybe, just, maybe don’t get your hopes up that this is as good as it looks, Dean.”

“So you’re saying we should, what, ignore that Cas is sitting right here asking us for help?”

“Of course that’s not what I’m saying,” Sam sighed, grabbing the pen back from Dean. He frowned in frustration at the paperwork in front of him. “I have no idea how anyone who isn’t lying about half of this stuff manages to fill out these forms,” he grumbled. “’Plans for Future Care of Patient’ – do we even have plans for tonight?”

“This – ah, Michelle chick have a local address?’ Dean asked.

Sam flipped through the pages of her medical chart, looking for the driver’s license. He quickly consulted the map program on his phone. “Yeah. I don’t think the place is far from here.”

“So let’s go to her house. We can crash there, finish the hunt, then decide what we do long term,” Dean suggested. “Give Cas a chance to get his – dammit, her – feet under her and maybe give us some real beds and a good shower for a change.”

An hour and a half later, Sam and Dean took official responsibility for their “cousin” Michelle Swanson. Cas endured several well-meaning, syrupy well-wishes from doctors and nurses for her future mental health, fortunately without saying anything that would have risked her release. Even though she had no clothes other than the hospital-issued pajamas and slippers, she was too eager to leave to wait for Sam or Dean to run out to get her something to wear. Instead, she wore one of Dean’s flannel shirts, a pair of his sweat pants rolled up several time to make up for the seven-inch difference in height, and those fuzzy pink hospital slippers. Even with the pants rolled up, she had to keep one hand on the waistband to keep them from falling down when she tried to walk through the hospital parking lot. Dean couldn’t help but laugh, earning him a glare from Cas.

“Not for nothing, Cas, but that look worked better when you were able to kick my ass,” Dean responded. He’d decided that, despite Sam’s misgivings, getting Cas back counted as a win, even if they had a long hard road ahead before things were going to be okay between them, and he wasn’t going to let anything spoil his good mood. Chances were something horrible would happen tomorrow anyway.

When they stopped at a bland gray mid-1980s four-door sedan, Cas looked surprised. “Where’s the Impala?” she asked.

“Baby’s on lockdown,” Dean grumped. “We’re sort of public enemy number one and two right now, and she’s too recognizable. So I have to drive _this_.” He said “this” as if the car were something slimy stuck to the bottom of his shoe. No, he had more patience with slimy things on his shoes. Then, feeling a little apologetic for laughing at Cas’s makeshift wardrobe, he opened the back driver’s side door for her with an exaggerated flourish. “Your ugly chariot awaits, milady.” He didn’t even have to see Sam to know that his brother rolled his eyes.

“You’re going to explain all of this, yes?” Cas asked, settling in to the back seat.

On the drive, Dean and Sam did their best to recap the last several months, the Leviathans, and how they ended up as wanted murderers with their faces on CNN. Cas asked a few questions but grew more and more still and silent as they talked. Dean managed to spit out the story of Bobby’s death by getting angry because anger was the only thing that kept the grief at bay. Well, anger and booze. When they finally finished, with Sam explaining why they’d been in Wabanquot in the first place, the silence from the back seat had heft and weight.

“This is all my fault,” Cas said. Broken, Dean thought, she sounded broken. He glanced quickly at Sam, who clearly had no idea what to say either.

“We need music,” Dean declared. He slammed his Best of Metallica cassette into the piece of crap car’s tape player and cranked the volume. For the rest of the drive, the music replaced any conversation, and it was probably for the best.


	2. Chapter 2

Michelle Swanson had a tidy little ranch house in the nearby town of Hanging Cloud, with a conveniently empty garage for stashing the piece of crap car. Dean dumped their duffle bags and Sam set up his laptop on the kitchen table while Cas wandered aimlessly around the house, carefully examining the pictures and other personal items. 

“I don’t remember any of this,” she said, sounding slightly baffled by all of it. “It means nothing to me.” She picked up a framed photo of Michelle standing next to a smiling man, holding a brightly-dressed toddler. “I usually have access to a vessel’s memories but whoever Michelle Swanson was, she’s just . . . gone.” She traced her fingers over the photo and then set it down. “I hope she and her family are in Heaven together. But I suppose I will never know.” 

Dean didn’t like the sorrow in her voice. “Hey, Cas, go find the master bedroom and get yourself some clothes that fit,” he suggested, leaping at the first distraction he could think of. “Sam, what kind of take-out places are nearby? I’m starved and Cas has been living on hospital food for three weeks.”

While Cas explored the rest of the house, Dean sat down at the kitchen table and tapped the top of Sam’s laptop to get his attention. “Tell me what the kid had to say.” 

“The kid’s name is Wendell. Wendell Dinehart.” Sam corrected.

“Yeah, yeah, tell me about the monster part,” Dean replied, wondering why Sam always had to put a name on someone Dean might have to put a bullet in. His job was supposed to be killing monsters, not killing dumbass college boys named Wendell. He paused for a moment to wonder what parent named their son something that was inevitably going to be shortened to “Wendy” by the average 12-year old boy.

“Wendell and his buddy Jason Erickson are pledges at a fraternity at the local U. Minnesota campus. Their ‘pledge challenge’ was to steal a prayer book from Saint Brigitta’s Church to prove they’d been inside at night. It’s the oldest church in the county and has the reputation of being haunted,” Sam explained.

“Haunted by?”

“Working on that. Wendell talked about a white lady in an old-fashioned dress who wanders around the church graveyard, but some of the nurses at the hospital said that St. Brigitta’s is haunted by a priest who committed suicide. Or possibly a nun. No one’s clear on that. And none of the stories have anything to do with dogs. I’ve got to dig into more of the local history.”

“Anyway,” Sam continued, “Wendell and Jason hopped the fence around 2 a.m., jimmied the lock on the church’s front door, and made off with a prayer book plus two silver candlesticks from the altar. In the graveyard, they were jumped by an enormous black dog that – according to Wendell, at least – had glowing blue fangs and eyes. Wendell helped Jason get over the fence before he got too ripped up, but Wendell couldn’t get over by himself and got mauled badly. Even with the cosmetic surgery he’s going to have scars for life. It was only because the cops showed up that he’s alive at all.”

“Cops shoot the thing?” Dean asked.

“Not according to Wendell. He said the dog ran off as soon as it heard the police sirens,” Sam explained with a shake of his head. “Witness testimony is always pretty unreliable, especially when it’s from a victim, but he was really clear it was a dog or wolf of some kind – fur, four feet, fangs, the whole nine yards. So, despite the attack happening at a full moon, it’s definitely not a werewolf.”

Dean leaned back in the kitchen chair. He desperately wanted a beer and a shower to get rid of the lingering stink of hospital. “Sounds like research time for you, Sammy,” he said. “I’m going to get out of the monkey suit and go pick up some food, see if I can get some local papers and gossip while I’m out. You find any place that does take out?”

“There’s a Mom and Pop burger place a couple of blocks away that carries veggie burgers. Get me the black bean burger with a side salad, okay? And I really mean black bean burger. I can tell the difference.”

“Yeah, yeah, black bean burger and leaves,” Dean assured him, settling comfortably into their familiar rhythms. He browsed through the cabinets and refrigerator to see what they had to work with for supplies. He found the coffee maker – thank God – and the coffee, plus some stinky herbal tea and a nicely stocked liquor cabinet, but very little in the way of edible food. There was some canned soup, a couple boxes of pasta and rice, a moldy loaf of bread, expired milk, and some leftovers in the ‘fridge that were busy mutating into something that would probably need silver or iron to kill. No surprise. No one had actually lived here since the Swanson family had their accident. “I’m going to pick up some other stuff too. The cupboard’s pretty bare here and this might take a few days.”

After a truly excellent shower and a return to his comfortable uniform of T-shirt, flannel shirt, jeans and boots, Dean went looking for Cas. On the way, he found the kid’s room with a small bed and a guest room/office combo with a decently sized double. That meant at least two real beds in the house, which was a welcome change from how he and Sam had been sleeping lately. Cas was in the master bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring out the window at trees that showed the first buds of spring. Somewhere she’d found a T-shirt and sweat pants that actually fit her, although her body had clearly lost weight since it had last worn those clothes. Cas didn’t acknowledge his presence at all.

“I’m going out for groceries and take out. Burger joint. Whatcha want?” he asked. Cas had never been interested in food as an angel. He had no idea what she’d like as a human.

“I don’t care. I’m not hungry,” Cas responded listlessly. She didn’t even bother to turn around to look at him, but kept staring out the window.

“Look, hospital food blows. Don’t judge all food by that slop. You’re human, you need to eat now,” Dean insisted. He wanted to get some kind of reaction out of her, but she seemed to have retreated somewhere he couldn’t follow. “You ever try a cheeseburger?”

“Whatever you think is best, Dean,” Cas said, the overtones of ‘please go away’ painfully clear. Dean knew how to deal with Castiel warrior Angel of the Lord, he knew how to fight with Cas, he knew how to deal with angry Cas, but he had no idea how to deal with sad, broken, human Cas, so he left her alone and went shopping.

The burger place was right next to a bar with a badly faded sign. Clearly, the locals knew it was here and no one else mattered. While the burgers were being grilled and the fries fried, Dean decided to grab a quick drink and talk to some of those locals. Over a decent local beer, he flirted good-naturedly with a bartender old enough to be his mother. He had to admit that he liked the banter for its own sake even when he wasn’t looking for action. It felt like being a normal person. From the bartender – her name was Joanne and Dean swore to himself he’d actually remember it, but knew he wouldn’t – he learned yet another version of the haunting of Saint Brigitta’s Church. It was the usual “Indian burial ground” story that cropped up all over the Midwest but was almost never true. They would check up on it all the same. 

Armed with groceries, two real bacon cheeseburgers, Sam’s ridiculous black bean thing that claimed to be a burger (but definitely wasn’t), plus some fries and Sam’s salad, Dean headed back to the house. He’d also grabbed a few things he thought Cas should try now that she was human and might be able to taste food. He’d certainly bought more than they needed, but they were doing okay on money for the moment and food was one of the sure-fire ways he knew to take care of people.

Sam was still at the kitchen table, still in his suit, still focused on his laptop. Dean guessed he probably hadn’t moved since Dean had left – the usual Sam stuff when he had caught a lead. “Chuck wagon’s here!” Dean declared, getting his brother’s attention. He handed Sam his bag of fake burger and rabbit food, threw the groceries that needed to be kept cold into the ‘fridge, then opened beers for the both of them.

Dean pried Cas out of the bedroom by sheer stubbornness. He triumphantly presented her with a bacon cheeseburger, fries and some boot-legged Canadian Coca-Cola made with actual sugar in an honest-to-God glass bottle. She made the effort to thank him, but her heart clearly wasn’t in it. She drank the Coke, nibbled some fries and ate only half the burger before making quiet excuses and retreating back to the master bedroom. Dean considered going after her but decided that Sam and the hunt took priority. For now.

Dean wrapped up the leftover burger and stashed it in the ‘fridge on the hope that he could encourage Cas to eat more later. The fries, however, were beyond excellent and he wasn’t giving those up. While he finished off both servings of fries, he compared notes with Sam, telling him the story he’d heard at the bar. Sam had been productive while he’d been out.

“I started out thinking skinwalker in its shifted form,” Sam explained. “But if it is, then it’s new to the area. I couldn’t find any other animal attack stories anywhere around here, even though I searched back more than 50 years. I’m not sure that all the local papers are on line, though. I’d like to hit the library and local newspaper office tomorrow.” 

“Then I started thinking maybe a vengeful spirit of some kind. But the local lore about Saint Brigitta’s is all over the map, including that Indian burial ground thing, a couple stories of white ladies, the dead priest, a dead nun, and, get this, ghosts of Confederate soldiers on the run from the Union army,” Sam continued. He was rubbing his forehead, whether from eye strain or repeated hallucinations of Hell, Dean couldn’t tell. Sam stood up, rolled his shoulders and shook out the tension in his neck. He finished his beer and tossed the empty bottle in the bin labelled “Recycling.” He looked ready for a break.

“What about black dog lore?” Dean asked.

“Black dogs are usually death omens as opposed to physical attackers, but maybe?” Sam responded.

“Take a break. I’ll read up on black dogs in Dad’s journal and see what I can find on line,” Dean offered. He’d dig into some research on the case and let Cas be for now, at least until he had any idea how to talk to her. How the hell was it possible to be furious at someone, he wondered, and want to help them stop hurting at the same time?

It was midnight when they finally gave up on doing research and kicking around ideas, but Dean knew his head was too full for him to sleep any time soon. He sent his brother off to sleep in the guest room – Sam would never fit on the couch but Dean would, just barely – and sat down to flip through TV channels. Whoever the Swansons had been, they had a decent cable package. Dead family’s house, dead family’s couch, dead family’s TV, and an ex-angel who’d somehow repo’d a half-dead body sleeping in the family bed like goddamn Goldilocks, Dean reflected morosely. 

Some cable channel was running a marathon of _Have Gun - Will Travel_. Dean settled in with another beer to watch Paladin adventure his way through a world where the good guys always won.

He hadn’t realized that he’d dozed off until he was awakened by the sound of someone moving around the living room. He automatically dropped his hand to the gun on the couch next to him. In the dim light of the TV and the kitchen night light, he saw Cas moving with a purpose, clearly looking for something. She looked exhausted and her long hair bore the tell-tale signs of tossing and turning against a pillow.

“Hey there Cas, can I help you find something?” he asked, trying to be quiet enough not to wake Sam but loud enough to be heard over the TV.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Cas responded. “I was looking for the pills the hospital gave me. I - I have trouble sleeping. And when I do sleep, I have nightmares. I’ve tried avoiding sleeping, but . . . human.” She made a vague motion of frustration and resignation.

Trouble sleeping and nightmares were things Dean knew all too well how to deal with. “Yeah, they gave us two bottles of pills for you, but we’re going to try something different.” He got off the couch, shut off the TV, walked into the kitchen, pulled two glasses from one of the cabinets and began to scrounge through the liquor cabinet. Yep, right where he’d remembered it, a nice single malt scotch, probably a gift these poor bastards had never gotten the chance to drink. “We are going to use the patented Winchester Method of Dealing with Crap. We are both going to drink ‘til we’re numb, talk until we’ve lanced that boil, and then probably never speak of it again, got it?” Dean set the glasses and the bottle down on the kitchen table, then motioned for Cas to take a seat across from him.

“Lance that boil? Your talent for evocative imagery remains intact,” Cas responded with something like the dry humor Dean remembered.

Dean couldn’t help but smile. “That is the most Castiel thing you’ve said all day.” He opened the bottle and poured out two shots. “Even as pissed at you as I am, I missed you, dammit. Now sit down and drink.”

Dean sipped his drink, savoring the smokiness and the burn. It was particularly good scotch – not surprising, given that it was nearly old enough to drink in most states. He contemplated saving a shot for Sam but decided brotherly love didn’t extend that far. Maybe Cas would appreciate it as much as he did. Rather than sipping, though, she downed the entire glass in one gulp, visibly flinching and grimacing, then held out the glass for more.

“Whoa there, cowgirl!” Dean exclaimed. “You’re not an angel any more. Take it easy.”

“You said the goal is to drink until we are numb. I would like to be numb as soon as possible, please.”

“Just watch yourself, okay. We want numb drunk, not puking or passing out.” He poured out a double shot for Cas and was relieved when she drank slowly and deliberately. “Plus, this is the good stuff. You’re supposed to take your time and enjoy the taste.”

Cas made one of those “I don’t understand humans but whatever you say, Dean” faces. He was pleasantly surprised at how much of Cas’s essential personality was still visible in a completely different face. 

“Tell me about the nightmares,” he asked.

“I see . . . everything that I did. Every single horrific, bloody thing. I watch my hands kill my fellow angels. I destroy Rafael so utterly he will never come back. I kill humans without the slightest hesitation. I watch myself arguing with you from inside a ring of holy fire, and I know that you are right and I want to change everything that comes after that, but I can’t. Sometimes I dream of the Leviathans, of the feeling of suffocating in oily blackness.” Dean could see tears starting to gather in the corners of her eyes. “The pills make the dreams less frequent, but all of it is still there behind my eyes whenever I shut them.”

Her words reminded Dean painfully of his own nightmares after Hell. It had taken nearly a year before they had stopped coming every single night, sometimes more than once a night. Even being with Lisa and Ben, as far away from hunting as he’d been since his mother died, he hadn’t been able to chase the nightmares away completely.

“I still dream about Hell,” he confessed. “Sometimes about being tortured, but more often it’s me doing the torturing. That’s always worse. Remembering myself doing those things . . . it’s horrible.” Dean refilled their glasses then downed the shot quickly before he started remembering too much.

“Does it ever get better?” Cas asked. 

Dean opted for honesty over comfort. “A little. Not much. Mostly I think the Hell nightmares don’t happen as often now because I have a bigger selection of shit to have nightmares about. Wish I had better news.”

For a change, Cas wasn’t looking at Dean. She was looking at the table, her glass, the kitchen night light, the floor, everything except the only other person in the room. “I’m sorry for everything Dean, so, so, sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah, road to hell, good intentions, all that,” Dean snapped back. “You lied to us. You lied to me, after I went to bat for you. You fucked up Sam’s head. How am I supposed to get past that?!”

“I don’t know. I truly don’t know. Maybe I don’t deserve to be forgiven.” She sounded leaden and defeated. She still wouldn’t look at him, even as more words tumbled out. “On the very first night we met in the flesh, I was amazed that you felt that you didn’t deserve to be saved. I didn’t understand then how anyone could feel that way. I understand it now.” 

Cas paused, blinking and rubbing her fingers over her eyes. Dean was taken aback. “Cas, are you . . . crying?”

“No . . . . yes. I don’t like being human. I weep when I experience strong emotion, and I am experiencing far too many strong emotions,” she replied, making a visible effort to control whatever she was feeling. Then she plunged on, speaking slightly too fast, as if the words had a force of their own. “I never wanted to be a leader. But when the Apocalypse didn’t happen and God didn’t return, the angels were scattered and lost. They were desperate for someone to tell them what to do. They kept asking _me_ how to live with free will, what it meant not to have orders to follow. They kept looking to _me_ for answers as though less than a year of living on Earth as a renegade had taught me everything we needed to know. The more they kept asking me what to do, the more I . . . I started to think that I did know the answers. I was prideful. So very prideful.”

“You know, I begged God for guidance,” she continued. “Begged. He never answered. I don’t know why I thought He would.”

She swallowed hard and emptied her glass. “Rafael would have been a disaster for everyone, angel and human. He intended to restart the Apocalypse. He had plans to pull Lucifer and Michael out of the Cage and start it all over again. And that – that would have dragged you and Sam back in. Your half-brother Adam could contain Michael adequately, but Michael was certain to want his true sword to be sure of defeating Lucifer, especially after he’d been thwarted once. Rafael’s angels would have come for you all over again and not cared who stood in the way. Lucifer would have come for Sam again. All of it. Everything all over again. I couldn’t let that happen. Not to Sam. Not to – not to you. Not if I could find a way to stop it.”

Dean stood up and began to pace around the kitchen. “Why the hell didn’t you come to me? Didn’t you talk to me? I would have had your back no matter what. We would have stopped those winged assmonkeys all over again. Together.” He wasn’t drunk by any means, but drinking had relaxed him just enough to be able to dig down to the biggest reason why he was angry and pull it up to the light. “Why the hell didn’t you trust _me_?” He slapped a hand down on the kitchen table, but Cas didn’t even flinch.

“You – you’re right. I should have talked to you. But you had already sacrificed so much,” Cas said, painfully quiet but still loud enough for Dean to hear. “I couldn’t be the one to ask more from you. I – I - just couldn’t. I was trying to – to – protect you.” 

“I don’t need to be protected,” Dean growled. He grabbed the bottle of Scotch, topped off their glasses, then spiked the bottle into the Recycling bin with a vengeance. 

“I am – was – an angel. Protecting you was my _job_. Why else did God bring me back from the dead – twice -- if not to keep on protecting you?” Cas demanded, showing the first signs of something stronger than flat, leaden sadness. Unfortunately, Dean recognized that something all too well. It was the same kind of acidic self-loathing he’d felt for so much of his own life. Before he could say anything, Cas continued, “It – it would have been better for everyone if I’d – if I’d stayed dead. But here I am. Wishing I were still dead and wondering what I should do about it.” She finished off the contents of her glass without even reacting to it.

Hearing those words from Cas hit Dean like a punch to the gut. This wasn’t going at all the way he had expected. He’d expected Cas to defend herself, to fight back, not to roll over and take the full force of his anger. Dean’s need to vent his own feelings warred with his fundamental instinct to protect and care for his people. And despite everything, Cas was his people. 

All those angels looking to Cas for leadership when he barely knew what he was doing. No father to turn to for guidance. Just responsibility, duty, and a bone-deep need to keep someone else safe. And that someone – wasn’t this a kick in the balls – that someone was Dean himself. Yeah, Cas had fucked up big time. But Dean couldn’t help thinking of his own long history of fuck-ups and failures. All the times he’d kept things from Sam for Sam’s own good. All the things he’d taken on himself so Sam wouldn’t have to. All those times he’d felt like he didn’t deserve to have a normal life with Lisa and Ben. Standing at a crossroads, making a deal with a demon because he’d failed to keep Sam safe and he didn’t deserve to live. Would he really have done any better than Cas? No, he wouldn’t have. He would have chosen something just as stupid and not let anyone talk him out of it, because it was his job to fix things for everyone else.

Cas was weeping fully now, despite her best efforts to lock it down. Dean walked around the kitchen table, pulled her to her feet and into a fierce embrace. Her arms wrapped around his waist and her face buried in his chest. Dean rested his head on top of hers and rubbed gentle circles up and down her back, the way his Mom used to do for him as a little kid, whispering into her hair, “It’s okay, Cas. It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay.”

They stood like that for a long time. His T-shirt was damp where her face was pressed into his chest. He held her until her sobs subsided and her tense body relaxed, making him wonder whether she’d somehow fallen asleep standing up. “Hey, you awake?” he asked.

“This feels nice. Why does this feel so nice?” she asked, slurring over the consonants.

He gently disengaged her arms from around his waist and stepped back. Cas swayed hard and grabbed the table behind her for support. “You are way beyond just numb, pal,” Dean said. “I told you to take it easy.”

Dean managed to get two decent-sized glasses of water into her before Cas started dozing off at the kitchen table. He took her hand and pulled her to her wobbly feet. It took less effort than he expected to get her into bed, on her side in case she needed to throw up the little she’d actually eaten, blankets tucked around her. By the time he returned and placed a cold bottle of water on the nightstand, Cas was breathing the soft, steady rhythm of sleep.

Dean sat down heavily on the end of the bed. Half of bottle of Scotch, even the good stuff, wasn’t enough to get him anywhere in shouting range of drunk. It wasn’t the booze that made him feel hollowed out and exhausted. That conversation had been goddamn hard. Hearing Cas say that she wished she were still dead had hurt like fire. He rested his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands and tried to summon the energy to get up and go to back to the living room couch. It didn’t help that the bed was damn comfortable – king-sized, with one of those feather top mattresses – even though it had too many of those fussy little decorative pillows that women seemed to love. It was so tempting just to fall down right here. 

Well, why the hell not? He’d already spent more than two years squashing his attraction to Cas. Ever since his Dad freaked out all those years ago after catching him making out with Lee Webb, Dean had known it wasn’t okay to admit he found men just as appealing as women. John Winchester’s oldest boy didn’t do that. Now that it was “safe” to be attracted to Cas? The biggest reason for not going there still applied. He was _not_ going to fuck up his relationship with his best friend. Sex he could get anywhere with a little effort. A friend who knew just about every awful thing about him and didn’t care? That was the goddamn Holy Grail. So he’d go right on squashing any of those thoughts, regardless of what meat suit Cas was wearing today.

Besides, Cas was plastered and out like a light. Nothing was going to happen. 

Dean sprawled out over the half of the bed she wasn’t using and sighed in contentment. Oh yeah, this was so much better than the couch. It took him no time at all to fall asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Because he’d been too exhausted to remember to close the curtains, Dean was awakened by sunlight directly in his face. No damn nightmares, for which he was immensely thankful. On the other side of the bed, Cas was still asleep, making soft little snores that were frankly kind of adorable. He thought about staying in bed a few more minutes, but his body and head were demanding coffee. 

Dean not only made coffee, he scrambled up some eggs and fried bacon. Over breakfast, he and Sam worked out a plan for the day. Dean would drop Sam at the library to run down local records and history. Then Dean would go question Wendell’s equally dumb friend Jason and try talking to the staff of the church.

Before they left, Dean went to check on Cas. She was awake, sitting in a pile of blankets and pillows, alternating between drinking from the water bottle Dean had left for her and holding its cool surface against her head. “Morning, sunshine,” Dean said, tossing her a banana. She didn’t try to catch it, but Dean’s aim was good enough that it landed in her lap anyway. “How’s the head?”

“Hurts,” Cas grumbled. 

“Next time don’t try to match me shot for shot. I’m a professional and at least half again your size now. There’s a big bottle of aspirin in the kitchen. Plus some coffee and eggs for you if you can keep down the banana.”

Cas looked green at the suggestion of food, but nodded.

“Look,” Dean added, “Sam and I are heading out to follow up on some leads. Here’s one of my spare cells with both of our current numbers. You call me if you need anything at all.” He set the phone on the night stand. “Drink a lot of water and sleep it off, okay?”

“I’m not a child, Dean. I have been intoxicated before.” 

“Yeah, well, that was when you were an angel. And a dude. You haven’t been renting this meat suit for all that long and you don’t know how it will react.” Dean used his best “I’m the big brother and I know better” voice, even though it only worked on Sam about half the time these days. Cas grumbled at him but didn’t argue. So point Dean. “Just promise you’ll call if you need anything at all,” he insisted. 

“I will call you if I need anything,” Cas conceded reluctantly. “Go do your job.”

Jason Erickson, Wendell’s partner in petty theft, was working his part-time job at the university athletics center when Dean finally tracked him down. While the kid stacked towels in the locker room, Dean took in Jason’s sloppy haircut, baggy threadbare jeans, off-brand sneakers and too-large baseball shirt with the faded logo of some local business. He’d bet his own money that this kid mostly shopped at second hand stores, and not because it was retro or trendy. He felt a twinge of sympathy.

Jason was suitably intimidated by the suit and the flash of the badge. Dean tried not to grimace when the kid immediately called him “sir.”

“So why were you and your buddy at the church that night?” Dean asked.

Jason hung his shaggy blonde head and looked ashamed. “It was a stupid prank, man. Just a stupid prank. They do it every year – send some dumbass freshman pledges to steal some somethin’ from Saint Brigitta’s Church to prove you went in there at night, ‘cause it’s supposed to be haunted, ya know? No one ever got hurt before.”

“But you didn’t just steal a prayer book, did you Jason?” Dean pressed. It took so little effort to put the fear of God into this kid.

“I just wanted a little extra cash, man,” Jason explained with a sad little whine. “I’m here on scholarship, with just this stupid job to pay for things like food and books. I’m sick of being broke all the damn time. I got no money to go on dates, no money for even pizza and beer with my bros. And it was the frickin’ Catholic Church, man. They got more money than anyone needs.”

“And so you got a little light-fingered,” Dean prompted.

“Yeah, man, ‘cause I’m a dumbass,” Jason muttered. He stopped doing any pretense of work and sat down on the locker room bench with a half a sob. “That damn dog came straight for me, ignored Wendell completely. I pissed myself and dropped everything. But Wendell, man, he was a frickin’ hero. He picked up one of the candlesticks and smacked the thing to get it offa me. Then he boosted me over the fence because my hands were shaking too bad to hold myself up. I just ran. . . . I didn’t even realize he wasn’t right behind me until I was almost back on campus.”

Stunned by silver candlesticks, Dean noted. That sure sounded like a skinwalker, but half the critters out there hated silver. “So what did this dog look like?”

Jason gave a little shiver. “It was frickin’ huge, man. It looked like my grandad’s Rottweiler on ‘roids. Its eyes were crazy bright blue, like a frickin’ propane torch, and it had that same blue light around its mouth and teeth.” He shook his head at the mental image. “Sounds crazy, right? But I wasn’t drunk or high, I swear.”

“Not that crazy,” Dean said, trying to be reassuring. The kid actually looked thankful for that. “Did it have a collar?”

“I dunno, man, all I could see where those crazy eyes and those teeth,” Jason responded.

Now for the big question. “Did it bite you?” Dean asked.

Jason nodded. “A little, maybe, but not as bad as Wendell. It bit at my legs and ankles, grabbed me with its mouth and front paws like it was trying to take me down, the way my grandad’s Rotty does when he’s playin’ too hard.” He rolled up the legs of his baggy jeans and pushed down his frayed socks, pointing at the healing wounds along his calves and ankles. Most of the marks were long slashes, not puncture wounds. Dean hoped for this kid’s sake that they really were from claws. Skinwalker claws didn’t carry the curse. 

Dean handed Jason a card. “Look, Jason, if more strange things happen to you, if you start feeling sick or weird or not like yourself, you call me, okay? I deal with crazy stuff like this all the time.” 

“Oh, wow, you’re like the X-Files?” Jason asked, stuffing the card in his jeans pocket. “Cool.”

Dean didn’t even react to the reference any more. “Yeah, something like that.” 

Sam was deep in the archives of the local library and not coming up for air any time soon, so Dean’s next stop was the scene of the crime. Saint Brigitta’s Church was on a side street off the main drag of Wabanquot, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence and a surprisingly large graveyard, with a nicely-tended garden that was just starting to bloom in the chilly Minnesota spring. The iron fence around the property displayed a sign proudly proclaiming the church to be on some historic register. The building’s cornerstone read 1841. 

The front door was ajar, so Dean walked right into the main room of the church. The large, dim space was lit only by candles and the light filtering through stained glass windows. It smelled lightly of beeswax and silver polish. At the end of one of the aisles, a brown-skinned woman in a dark blue sweater and jeans was dusting a statue and its surrounding candles. She noticed Dean right away.

“Hello!” she called out, waving to catch his attention. “Next Mass is at five-thirty. If you’re here for confession, Father Pederson will be done with lunch in a minute or two.” She sounded exactly like the lady cop from _Fargo_.

“Agent Peart, FBI. I’m here to ask some questions about the accident that happened here about two weeks ago – the college kids that were hurt when they tried to steal something from the church,” Dean replied, flashing his fake FBI badge. 

She put down her dust rag, brushed her hands on her jeans, strode up to Dean and shook his hand with a purpose. “I’m Ada Beach. I take care of things around here,” she explained. Despite the ample amount of gray threading through her long, straight black hair, she was a handsome woman with a grip like a pipe-fitter. Dean liked her instantly. She gestured for him to follow her into a small office off the main room. “I already answered questions for the local police. But anything to help,” Ada said as she sat down behind an old, meticulously neat, desk. She motioned for Dean to take a seat in one of the wooden guest chairs, also old, but well-maintained. 

“I need to ask you about the boys’ claims that they were attacked by a large black dog. Do you know whether anyone around here owns a dog like that?”

Ada shook her head. “After the boys were attacked, the local police put out bulletins trying to find anyone who owned a large black dog so that it could be tested for rabies. I think every German Shepherd, Doberman and Rottweiler in the county was checked. As far as I know, they never identified the dog that bit them. Everyone assumes it was a stray that has since moved on.”

Dean already knew the police had not identified the dog. They hadn’t even found evidence of dog footprints at the scene. But he wanted to get her talking and easing in with questions about the dog was the fastest way. “Have you ever seen a stray dog running around the church property?”

“No, I haven’t. But I was on vacation the week before the attack, so I can’t say that something didn’t move in to the area while I was away,” Ada answered.

“Have there ever been any other attacks on church property? Attacks of any kind, not just animal attacks?”

Ada had to stop and think about that one for a moment. “Every few years or so, that dratted fraternity sends some more foolish boys out to steal our candles or a prayer book or something else small but annoying. I report it to the university every time it happens, but no one ever seems to do anything about it. I started locking the front gate and the church door at night two years ago, even though Father hates shutting people out from God’s house.”

“And what happened to those other frat boys?” Dean prompted. 

“Slaps on the wrist from the university, as far as I know. But none of them were ever hurt. I’ve worked here for 30 years and in all that time no one’s ever been hurt or attacked on this property, not until this last time,” Ada insisted. She seemed personally offended by the disruption.

“What can you tell me about the candlesticks the boys tried to steal?”

Ada explained, “They may not be fancy, but they are silver antiques bought over from Sweden by the white settlers. They are some of the most valuable things that this parish owns. It would have been a huge loss both monetarily and sentimentally if we had lost them.”

“There are lots of stories about this church being haunted. Tell me about them,” Dean asked.

“What does that have to do with a dog attack?” Ada asked. She did that Mr. Spock thing where she raised one eyebrow, something Dean had always thought was cool.

“Well, both victims are claiming that the dog that attacked them had glowing blue eyes and fangs. If someone was playing a deliberate prank, it would help to know why they chose Saint Brigitta’s for their game.”

Ada chuckled lightly. “And here I thought for a moment I was talking to Agent Mulder.”

Dean flashed his best charming smile. “Hey, can’t go wrong with Duchovny, am I right?” When Ada smiled back, Dean took that as permission to press his questions. “Tell me about the ghost stories.”

Ada sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Everyone thinks old churches are haunted. But there are no ghosts here, Agent Peart.” She ticked off the stories on her fingers as she spoke. “No one killed themselves here. Every priest who ever worked here died peacefully. I’m half Ojibwe and I assure you that this church is not built on an important Native American site. We had that checked. There were never any runaway Confederate soldiers hiding in the basement crypts. The church doesn’t even have basement crypts. Just a root cellar with a dirt floor.”

“Why dredging up the old spook stories, Ada?” A short, portly middle-aged white man in a Catholic priest’s black suit and white collar stepped into Ada’s office. “How do you do? I’m Father John Pederson,” he said, extending a hand to Dean. “I’m afraid I eavesdropped a little bit on your conversation.”

Dean stood and shook the priest’s hand. “Agent Peart, FBI. No need to apologize, Father. I would have had to ask you the same questions eventually anyway.” Dean sat back down and Father Pederson took the other guest chair. “I’m trying to get to the bottom of why Wendell Dinehart and Jason Erickson say they were attacked by a black dog with glowing blue eyes and fangs,” Dean explained.

Father Pederson sighed. “Because they were very irresponsible, and likely either very drunk or very high, doing something they shouldn’t have been doing, and want everyone to pay attention to something other than what they did?” He shook his head in bewilderment. “Those boys got attacked by someone’s stray dog. Nothing more.”

“Anyone new to the parish in the last few months?” Dean asked.

Father Pederson chuckled ruefully. “Well, the Berglands just had twins last month. But otherwise church attendance is going down, not up. Every Sunday the pews seem more and more empty. I feel like I should be doing more somehow, but I just don’t know what.”

“Now, Father.” The gentleness in Ada’s tone spoke of long years working together. Friendship, even. She said she took care of things here, and Father Pederson was definitely one of those things, Dean thought.

After more deliberately rambling questions, Father Pederson had nothing to add to Ada’s information about dog attacks or church history. Dean ran through all the usual ghost hunting questions, but neither Father Pederson nor Ada admitted to any cold spots, unusual noises, moving objects, or anything else that might indicate a ghost. They’d never smelled sulfur or noticed anything amiss in their nice, quiet old church. In fact, they both reported feeling safe and secure in the church and on the church grounds no matter how late they worked.

Finally, almost clutching at straws, Dean asked, “Would I be able to look over the church’s records? They might shed some light on why a place like this was targeted for a prank attack.” A skinwalker seemed more and more unlikely. Maybe some disgruntled past employee or parishioner had summoned something? Or a cursed object?

Ada considered carefully, looking to Father Pederson. Wordlessly, they came to a decision. “I don’t see why you couldn’t look through our records,” Father Pederson said.

Ada added, “But you should know that all the records from 1841 through about 1890 are in Swedish. Most of the original white settlers around here did not speak English.”

Great, Dean thought. Just great. “Do either of you read Swedish?” he asked.

“Not a word of it,” Father Pederson responded. “We’ve been talking for years about hiring someone to translate the old records so that people can use them for genealogical research, but we just can’t seem to find the money.” Ada made a sour face in agreement.

Ada escorted him to a small room on the second floor of the church. Two walls were lined with books while the other two walls bore large murals – one showed a blonde lady with a halo holding a book and a staff, while the other showed Dean’s second-least-favorite archangel. Ada noticed him eyeing the paintings. “That’s Saint Brigitta of Sweden, the patron saint of this church,” she explained, pointing to the haloed lady. “And the other is –“

“The Archangel Michael,” Dean finished for her. “I’m not Catholic, but I know that one.”

“Of course. He’s the patron saint of law enforcement,” Ada noted. Dean didn’t bother to correct her.

One entire wall of bookshelves was devoted to church records. After Ada pointed out the ones in English, Dean sat down at the wobbly library table and began skimming through them, looking for anything that might be unusual. The records confirmed that Ada had worked here for nearly 30 years without any attacks or incidents, so she was unlikely to be a skinwalker, which made Dean happy because she seemed like a solid lady. Father Pederson had been here for 15 years, also no attacks or weirdness during that time. The priests before him seemed equally steady and dull with no recorded complaints other than too much fondness for the bottle. It was slow and tedious work. Dean found his thoughts drifting as he ran through page after page of marriages, christenings, deaths and other mundane details. 

The mural of Michael had sparked a memory. When the angels were trying to convince him to say “yes” to Michael, Zachariah sent him to a future where Sam was possessed by Lucifer and everything had gone to hell in a handbasket. On that crazy trip, he’d not only met his own Class A douchebag future self, he’d also met a future version of Cas. That Cas was seriously messed up, drowning himself in drugs and sex because he wasn’t an angel anymore. One conversation with that Cas came back to him loud and clear:

 _So, you're human. Well, welcome to the club,_ Dean had said.

 _Thanks. Except I used to belong to a much better club. And now I'm powerless. I'm hapless, I'm hopeless,_ Cas had responded, perfectly summing up that gray, bleak and broken future.

As much as he’d often wished that Cas would loosen up a little, he didn’t want that ending for this Cas, his Cas. Not if he had anything to say about it.

Dean pulled his phone out of his jacket and dialed the number for the spare he’d left with Cas. She answered it after only a few rings, sounding sleepy.

“Heya Cas, how’re you feeling?”

“Adequate, which is a vast improvement over this morning,” she answered.

“Did you eat something?”

“The banana,” she answered. “I’ve been sleeping. This bed is much more comfortable than the one in the hospital and so far I have avoided any nightmares.”

Well that was good news, at least. “Look, I’ve hit a dead end and I’m going to head back to the house before I pick up Sam from the library. Can I bring you something?”

He could almost hear her thinking over the phone. Finally, she said, “I think I might be hungry, but I don’t know what to ask for.”

“I’ll surprise you, then. See you in forty-five minutes or so.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why Agent Peart? Because I started writing this on the day Neil Peart died and I'm sentimental.


	4. Chapter 4

Cas had gotten out of bed by the time Dean got back to the house, which he took as a good sign. He found her in the kitchen, still in last night’s sweat pants and T-shirt, poking a fork at the congealed scrambled eggs that he had left out for her hours ago. Dean grabbed the plate of eggs and dumped it in the garbage before Cas had a chance to object, replacing it with a glass of water, a bottle of Gatorade and a ham and cheese sandwich he’d picked up at a deli near the church. They sat and ate for a few minutes before Dean’s need to find out how Cas was doing got the better of him.

“So, uh, how much of last night do you remember?” he asked.

“Most of it, I believe,” Cas responded. She put the sandwich down, took a swig of the Gatorade and grimaced sharply at the taste. “Is this supposed to be enjoyable?”

“If you’re dehydrated or hung over, it tastes great. If you’re not, it’s awful,” Dean explained. “So congratulations, you’ve survived your first hangover as a human.”

“Hurrah,” she answered. It was amazing, Dean thought, how her voice could be so different but still convey exactly the same tone of dry frustration.

“I have a question, though, about last night. Did you . . . hug me?” Cas asked with a tilt of her head.

“Oh shit, Cas,” Dean instantly began apologizing. He should never have done it. Sam really wasn’t wrong about him being a sucker for damsels in distress. “You were crying and . . . look, if I overstepped, I didn’t mean --” 

Cas put up a hand to stop him. “No, you don’t need to apologize. It was unexpected, so I wasn’t sure I was remembering correctly. It was . . . nice.”

“Uh, yeah,” Dean muttered, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment. 

“Thank you for that, Dean. Thank you for listening. And thank you for staying to watch over me while I slept,” Cas said. Of course she’d see it that way, Dean realized, and not get all weird about them sharing a bed. 

Then, almost as an afterthought, Cas added, “I never had anyone take care of me before. I’m sorry if I let you think I didn’t appreciate it.”

It had never occurred to him how alone Cas was now that she was human. Did she even know anyone who was still alive other than him and Sam? There were so many things Dean wanted to say. He didn’t know how to say any of them. Instead, he did what he always did and tried to talk to Cas with his eyes, hoping that Cas could read in them what he couldn’t say out loud. They sat across the kitchen table, half-eaten sandwiches ignored, minutes stretching out in silence. 

Cas found words first. “Dean, all of that . . . last night . . . does it mean that you are willing forgive me?”

Of course she had to ask, Dean reflected. Cas was older than he could imagine but most of that life had been as an obedient weapon. A hammer with wings. When it came to feelings, she was an amateur. Just his luck that his best friend would be worse at talking about this shit than he was. He’d need to use words, which meant he’d need to find the words and make them the right ones. “Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, I think I can forgive you. But there’s still things we need to do, you and me, to make everything okay.”

Cas didn’t hesitate. “Anything. I will do anything that you ask of me, Dean.”

The weight of that trust was huge. Dean chose his next words carefully. “First, we can’t play this game where you keep things from me because you think it’s for my own good. Or you tell me half the truth because you think I don’t need to know. No more secrets. No more hiding things. From now on, we tell each other _everything_ , got it?” Dean insisted.

“Yes. Yes, I can do that,” she agreed. 

“Second, you gotta make things okay with Sam.”

“Dean, the way I am now, I can’t heal him or replace the wall in his head that protected him from memories of Hell,” Cas protested.

“I didn’t say heal him,” he corrected. “I know you can’t fix him without your angel mojo. You apologized to me. You need to apologize to Sam too. He deserves to hear you say you’re sorry and you need to say it to him, for your own sake.”

Cas nodded. “I will do my best.”

“And last and most importantly, you need to take care of your damn self. You need to eat and sleep and do all the things that humans have to do,” Dean said.

“I will if you will,” she volleyed back. “I am serious, Dean. I can’t heal you any more when you get hurt. I can’t keep undoing the damage you do to yourself by drinking too much, eating poorly and not sleeping enough.”

“Deal.” Sam had been nagging him about his drinking since Bobby died. If cutting back was what it took to make Sam _and_ Cas happy, he supposed he could give it a shot.

“Is that everything?” Cas asked, slightly wary. Dean nodded, mouth full of sandwich, and she looked first relieved then thoughtful. They ate in companionable silence for a few more minutes before Cas said, “I have some questions.”

“Shoot.”

“The lawyer for Michelle Swanson called here today while you were out. He asked about how I wanted to handle the life insurance money and money from a lawsuit, but I had no idea what to say. I asked him to call back again tomorrow,” she explained. “I don’t know anything about how humans handle money. What do I do?”

Although Dean liked to play stupid when he could use it to his advantage – or when he was feeling lazy – he knew a lot of things. He knew how to rebuild a car from the ground up, how to build an EMF detector from a Walkman, how to make a real meal for two growing boys from what you could buy at a truck stop, and how to gank just about any miserable thing that went bump in the night. But normal people things like life insurance? He had no idea. Time was, he would have called Bobby for this sort of thing. Garth, maybe? Jody Mills? Crazy Frank Devereux? “I dunno, Cas. But I’ll make some calls, okay?”

“Thank you.”

“What else ya got?”

“Can you give me something to do? I’ve spent the last three weeks forced to be idle or drugged into sleep. I wasn’t made for that. Just please, something? Anything?” Cas pleaded.

“I dunno, without your mojo --” Dean began.

“I’m not useless, Dean,” Cas insisted, showing some steel at last. 

Dean smiled. The more original Cas came out to play, the better, as far as he was concerned. “Well, then, what can you do?”

“My grace may be gone, but I still have all the knowledge I’ve acquired. I know lore. I speak and read Enochian and the languages of nearly every living creature --”

“Do you speak Swedish?” Dean interrupted. “Read it?”

“Yes,” Cas responded, perplexed.

Dean pulled out his phone and dialed Ada Beach’s number. “Ms. Beach. Yes, this is Agent Peart. I’ve found a consultant who reads Swedish. . . . Yes, we can come back first thing in the morning tomorrow. Thank you.” He put down the phone and shot Cas a broad grin. “There ya go. Tomorrow morning you are an official fake FBI consultant.” 

Sam, of course, had misgivings. “You sure you want to take Cas out on a hunt?” he asked as they drove from the library back to the Swanson house.

“I need someone who reads Swedish in case there’s something in the church records that helps and Cas needs something to do, so unless you’ve been holding out on me about your Swedish Rosetta Stone subscription, I’m taking her on a field trip. What’s the big deal?”

“It seem awfully soon. She just got out of the hospital yesterday. And how do you even know that Cas wants to help out on a hunt?” Sam asked.

“Dude, she begged me to give her something to do. Besides, how much trouble can we get in translating moldy old church records?” Dean explained.

“You and Cas? You’ll find the frickin’ Necronomicon in there,” Sam teased.

“Shut up,” Dean grumbled good-naturedly. “As far as hunting – you really think we could just leave Cas behind after this hunt is done? Even without any mojo, she’s still got a lot of angel knowledge in her head. You know as well as I do that every goddamn demon and Leviathan is going to want to get their grubby paws on a defenseless angel. And I’m sure Crowley wants his pound of flesh for the way things went down. The safest place Cas could possibly be is with us.” 

Sam frowned ruefully. “You’re right. Seems like a real waste of a second chance, though.”

“Cas is like us, Sammy. He – shit, she – isn’t made for sitting on the sidelines. So unless you’ve got a good reason for keeping Cas on the bench, we’ve got ourselves a sidekick,” Dean replied. 

Sam did his pensive gazing out the passenger window thing. Most of the time Dean knew exactly what was going on in his brother’s head, but this wasn’t one of those times. Finally, as they were pulling in to the driveway of the Swanson house, Sam said, “Well, just so it’s clear, she doesn’t get to sit in the front seat.”

One of the things that Dean had discovered during his year with Lisa and Ben was that he enjoyed cooking, especially when he had an actual kitchen and the right ingredients. Just like working on a car, it let him sort of focus and zone out at the same time, which was relaxing. Cas watched the whole process of heating up pasta, sauce and meatballs with real fascination, while Sam recapped all the ideas he’d chased down at the newspaper office and the library, all of which had turned out to be dead ends. 

“I swear nothing interesting has happened in this town – or this whole county – since before World War I,” Sam grumbled. “Whatever this thing is, it’s got to be brand new to the area. I’m still thinking skinwalker.”

“Doesn’t feel right for a skinwalker,” Dean disagreed. 

He dropped three full plates on the table along with three bottles of beer and insisted that they eat before they talked about the case anymore. Dean was on his second helping before he was able to get Cas to stop asking questions about the food and actually eat it, but at least she ate something like what a person should eat. Even Sam went back for seconds. Sitting there at a real kitchen table, in a house, not a crappy motel, eating home-cooked food, Dean felt the familiar pang of missing Lisa. And Ben. And Bobby. But he had Sam and now they had Cas and there was a comfort in that, he thought. Let Sam worry that things had come together all too conveniently. Dean was going to ride this good feeling for as long as he could.

While he was waiting for Sam and Cas to finish eating, Dean filled the time with the information he’d gotten from Jason and the trip to the church. At the end of his recap, Cas was frowning in thought.

“Can you describe the dog again?” she asked hesitantly.

“You got somethin’ there, Cas?” Dean asked.

“Maybe. It's probably nothing.”

Dean repeated the description the frat boys had given. Big black dog, like a Rottweiler, with glowing blue eyes and the same blue glow around its mouth and teeth. It definitely had sparked something in Cas’s brain.

“It could be a kyrkogrim. In old Scandinavian tradition, at the founding of a new church, they would kill and bury an animal, usually a dog, on church grounds to act as a guardian spirit,” Cas explained. “I thought it was just a myth like so many other human church practices. I had no idea it might have any real power.”

“Wait, that makes sense,” Sam chimed in, jumping up from the kitchen table to grab his laptop. “The only fatal dog or wolf attack story I found in the records of this area was from nearly 100 years ago, so I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. I only made a copy of the article at all because it also involved an attempted theft from Saint Brigitta’s Church.” Sam pulled up an image of an old local newspaper on his laptop and showed it to Dean. “Here you go, 1901, Karl Lindgren, age 29, local drunk, found mauled to death on the grounds of Saint Brigitta’s Church. It was blamed on wolves. But he was trying to steal the church poor box when he was attacked.”

“So this kirk-a-gram --” Dean began.

“Kyrkogrim,” Cas corrected. “It means ‘church grim’.”

“This church grim, it’s just a ghost, right?” Dean asked. “We figure out where they buried the dog, salt and burn and we should be good!” 

“Let me check the lore on church grims, just in case there’s something special about them or some specific thing we need to put them down,” Sam added eagerly, his fingers flying over laptop keys. 

“Nice one, Cas, up top!” Dean raised his right hand for a high-five but Cas simply looked deeply confused. “It’s a high five. You smack your hand against mine to celebrate a victory. C’mon!” Cas’s open disbelief was almost funny. Dean was going to have to find a shorter name in his head for her “I don’t understand you humans but whatever you say, Dean” face. When she lightly smacked Dean’s raised hand, he all but shouted, “There you go! One more successful human lesson!” Sam rolled his eyes so loudly they could probably hear him three towns away. Dean laughed and started clearing the table. “All right, padawan, let me teach you how to do dishes.”

“What’s a padawan?” Cas asked, clearly trying to figure out if she’d just been insulted.

“Student of a Jedi knight, from _Star Wars_ ,” Dean explained. As he piled the dinner dishes in the sink, a thought struck him. “Sammy, we have _got_ to show Cas _Star Wars_ first chance we get. Well, maybe not the prequels, ‘cause they mostly suck ass, but you gotta see the originals.” Having Cas around would be a good excuse to remember to do things for fun every now and then, like they used to do back in the old days when they were just two brothers hunting monsters.

From behind his laptop, Sam brought the snark. “If for no other reason than you’ll understand at least 50% more of what Dean says.”

“Oh, like you don’t love it too, Wedge Antilles,” Dean shot back. 

Two hours later, Sam was satisfied that he’d covered the lore on church grims. Just like Cas said, they were the spirits of dogs bound into service to protect churches. As far as Sam could tell, no one had ever actually tried to kill one, but there was no reason why the usual salting and burning the bones _shouldn’t_ work. 

Meanwhile, Cas had wandered outside to sit on the back patio. Now was as good a time as any for Dean to stick her and Sam in a room together so she could apologize. 

The night air was cold and the sky was cloudless. Cas was sitting cross-legged on one of those big wood lounge chairs, head turned towards the sky, seemingly ignoring the temperature. She looked peaceful and Dean was reluctant to interrupt her.

But Cas knew he was there even before he said anything. “You know, I remember when the moon was captured by Earth’s gravity. It was magnificent. Even now, with my vision limited to human perceptions, it’s quite beautiful. I can understand why so many human societies thought the moon was worthy of worship,” she mused. 

Every time Cas said stuff like this, it set Dean back a step, reminding him that his nerdy, frequently badass buddy with zero fashion sense was impossibly old and had seen things Dean couldn’t even imagine. He remembered all the times he’d mouthed off at Cas and wondered, not for the first time, at Cas’s patience with him. That Cas had only really smacked the complete shit out of him once was kind of amazing, in hindsight.

“You ready to talk to Sam?” he asked.

Cas sighed heavily. “Why do you always ask me if I’m ready before we do things no one could possibly be ready for?”

“Tradition,” Dean responded, because a smart ass answer was better than no answer.

“Is there any of that scotch left?” she asked. “It might help.”

“Nope, but I’ll find you something else. Only take it easy this time. We’ve got an appointment in the morning. You may be the only one who can figure out where they buried the dog,” he said.

She turned a somber face to him. “Dean, I’m not sure you should trust my judgment about, well, anything. But . . . do we really need to kill the kyrkogrim? It was only doing what it was made to do.”

Trust Cas to see the point of view of the guardian spirit who hurt people because it was doing its job. Dean should have seen that one coming. “I dunno. It did mess up those kids pretty badly.”

“It could have killed them. It didn’t,” Cas countered. “In 170 years or so, it’s only killed one person and injured two more. Does that make it an irredeemable monster that needs to die?”

Dean didn’t need her to say the words out loud to know what came next. They’d both done far worse things than that. So had Sam.

Cas unfolded herself from the chair and shivered, noticing the temperature for the first time. “But as I said, I wouldn’t trust my judgment on such things,” she added sadly. “I’ll go try to talk to Sam, now, if you think he’ll be willing to listen.”

He left Sam and Cas at the kitchen table with a bottle of bourbon. So that he wouldn’t be tempted to listen – or, inevitably, jump into the middle of it – he took a really long shower, letting the water pound on his shoulders and back. After his shower, he found Sam sitting alone at the kitchen table, the bourbon bottle half empty. Dean could tell he was shaken up. “So?” he asked, taking the seat opposite his brother and pouring himself a shot.

“I didn’t even know Cas could cry,” Sam replied. 

“Probably couldn’t back when he was an angel,” Dean noted. “But now he’s human and carrying around a truck load of guilt and regret and feeling every damn bit of it. It’s pretty fucked up, even for us.” He drained his glass. Not as good as last night’s scotch, but still pretty damn good. He poured himself another and offered the bottle to Sam, who waved it off. “Cas scared the shit out of me last night when she said she wished she were still dead.”

Sam changed his mind and poured himself a drink. “And so that was it? That’s all it took to get you to forgive her?” Sam asked. The question carried a weird mixture of angry and sad, and Dean knew exactly how that felt. Particularly when it came to Cas.

“Cas fucked up. Big time. Epically. But, ya know, so have we. Between you and me, we started the fucking Apocalypse. And yet here we are,” Dean explained. “Sitting there last night, listening to her rip into herself even more than I wanted to, I decided that we don’t have so many friends left that I should give up on Cas. So, yeah, I’m working on forgiveness and we’re gonna work on being friends again.”

Sam did what Sam did. He weighed and considered and thought, drinking his bourbon in slow deliberate sips. Dean gave him all the room he needed. 

“I’m angry. I’m going to be angry as long as I keep getting flashes of Hell every time I’m not completely focused on something else,” Sam explained. “But I’m also tired of being angry all the time. So what I’m saying is I don’t hate Cas, and I’m working my way around to forgiving her.”

Now Dean just needed to make sure that Cas was on board with his crazy Three Amigos plan. “How drunk is she?” Dean asked.

Sam shrugged. “Some.”

“Not helpful, dude,” Dean responded. At least “some” was better than last night. “Outside or bedroom?”

“She said she was going to bed, early morning and all that,” Sam answered. 

“I’m gonna go check on her,” Dean said, finishing his drink. “It’s a big brother thing. Hard habit to break.” 

Cas was sitting on the bed, arms wrapped around her legs, head on her knees. She looked very painfully human. When she raised her head, Dean wasn’t surprised to see that her eyes were red and puffy. She gestured for him to come in. He sat at the end of the bed. “You need anything?” he asked.

“A great many things. None of which are within your power to provide, unfortunately,” she said, her voice heavy with sadness. “But I did as you asked and talked to Sam.”

“Yeah, he told me,” Dean replied. He didn’t ask. Whatever Cas and Sam said belonged between them. “So, you going to be up for playing translator tomorrow morning?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m adjusting adequately to this body’s limited alcohol tolerance. I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t.” Of course she wouldn’t. Even when Cas was dead wrong, Dean thought, she went at things 100%. They wouldn’t be in half the shit they were in now if Cas were capable of doing anything less.

Dean realized abruptly that they were doing that thing again where they just stared at each other for way too long. “So, uh, yeah, I should let you get some sleep,” he said, feeling suddenly awkward.

As he started to stand up, Cas stopped him with a question. “Dean, what happens after you and Sam finish with this case?”

He sat down. No one else would have recognized the fear and worry in that question. Well, no other human for sure. She thought they were going to leave her here alone. Dean was getting ready to launch into an angry rant about how she wasn’t trusting him again when he remembered what she’d said this afternoon: _I never had anyone take care of me before._ No wonder he and Cas clicked so well. Their emotional baggage came in matching colors. 

So he gave her exactly what he’d want to hear, if he was in her shoes. “Cas, when we’re done with this job, when we move on to our next job, you’re coming with us. You’re with us for as long as you want to be. That’s why I insisted you and Sam get right with each other.”

“That’s – that’s so much more than I deserve,” she said, voice breaking.

“Screw deserve. You’re family and we don’t leave family behind,” Dean insisted.

“Thank you,” she answered. He thought she might cry again, but instead she scrubbed her hands against her face and shook her head. “How do humans even function with all of these . . . feelings roiling around inside them?”

Dean laughed darkly. “Mostly, I drink and hit things. It ain’t healthy but it gets the job done.”

She gave him the full head tilt and eyebrow arch. “Is that another human lesson for me?”

Of all the times for Cas to forget that sarcasm was a thing. Dean rubbed his jaw. “Yeah, uh, you know I’m not exactly Mr. Well-Adjusted, right? You should probably find someone else to teach you about being human.”

The sadness that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in Cas’s eyes over the past two days shifted, becoming something else. “Dean, you give yourself too little credit. You can be difficult and stubborn and childish, but you are a good man. You are brave and selfless, often to the point of foolishness. You are loyal and you have a capacity for love and forgiveness that shames me. When you’ve made mistakes, you’ve made them out of love. Not pride. Not a desire for power. So no, I don’t think there is someone else better to teach me about being human.”

He wanted to give her a smart ass response, to tell her to stop blowing smoke up his ass. But Cas didn’t blow smoke. No matter how wrong she was – and Dean could name a dozen reasons off the top of his head why she was wrong about him – she believed what she was saying. “Cas, you shouldn’t --” he protested.

“I’m sorry. I’ve made you uncomfortable,” she interrupted. The sadness was back. “You should go get some sleep.” He knew a dismissal when he heard one.


	5. Chapter 5

“Come on, Cas, get a move on!” Dean shouted from the living room as he adjusted his tie. She was taking even longer than Sam and his ridiculous hair. 

“I’m sorry. It took a little longer than I expected to put everything together. Women’s clothing was very different the last time I had a female vessel. Is this all right?” Cas asked.

She’d raided Michelle Swanson’s closet for black pants, a white dress shirt and a bright blue blazer. Her long hair was back in a neat braid. She looked professional and a little nerdy, which was perfect.

“Definitely all right,” Dean responded. “But you’re missing something.” He picked up a pile of khaki cloth from the couch and tossed it to Cas. She unfurled her old trench coat. Her smile was so broad that Dean thought her face would burst. “I, uh, had it cleaned and everything. It was stinkin’ up the trunk,” he explained. 

The coat was huge on her, but for the first time since he’d found her at the hospital, Cas looked completely comfortable in her brand new skin. Dean helped her adjust the fall of the lapels over her blazer and nodded in satisfaction. “There. Sam’s waiting in the car. Let’s go.”

Ada Beach met them at the door of the church. “Ms. Beach, thank you for letting us come back. This is my partner, Agent Lee, and Ms. Swanson, our translator,” Dean said. 

“Pleased to meet you both,” Ada responded, shaking their hands with her strong grip.

“I hope you don’t mind if we take a look around the church and the grounds while Ms. Swanson does her thing with the records,” Dean asked. “My partner here is a big history buff.” In case the records didn’t pan out, they had a few other ideas on finding where the dog was buried.

“Be my guest. I’ll be in my office doing paperwork if you need anything,” Ada replied. “Why don’t you come with me, Ms. Swanson, and I’ll get you started on our old books.” With a nod to Dean, she escorted Cas into the church.

Dean and Sam scoured the church property for EMF, but the presence of so many graves nearby threw off all the readings. The headstones were no help. Most of them had only had names and dates, and any older inscriptions were all in Swedish, which meant they’d need Cas to read them. “Would it have killed them to do a memorial plaque or something?” Dean said in frustration. “Or even a Beware of Dog sign?”

“You know, some of the lore I was reading last night talked about creating church grims by burying the dog’s body under the foundation stones of the church,” Sam noted. “What the hell do we do then? Borrow a backhoe?”

“Beats me,” Dean replied. As if Ada Beach would let them anywhere near the church’s carefully-tended flower garden with a backhoe. 

While Sam checked around the foundation for runes or inscriptions, Dean considered what Cas said last night. Only two attacks in nearly 200 years. He thought about Ada and Father Pederson telling him that they felt safe here no matter how late they had to work. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing if the dog’s body was somewhere they couldn’t get at it. 

His phone buzzed with his text message alert. Cas had found what they needed. Time to go to work.

The three of them meet in the church record room. Cas had taken notes in neat, compact, but completely undecipherable handwriting. A second look confirmed for Dean she’d taken notes in Enochian. He’d have to remind her that they needed these things in English for him and Sam. 

“The dog’s name was Trogen. He belonged to the first priest of this parish, Johan Nilsson. They buried Trogen at the base of the front stairs, underneath where that slate walkway is now. So there you are,” Cas explained.

“That’s inconvenient,” Sam said thoughtfully. 

Cas was quiet, her hands folded on the record room table, looking at Dean. This was his cue, if he was going to take it. “Hey, let’s take some time and think whether there’s another way to handle this short of a backhoe,” he suggested. At Sam’s look of surprise, he added, “Look, we’re not on the clock. The grim has only attacked people twice since 18-frickin’-41. We’ve got time to be creative.”

“The ritual they used to create the kyrkogrim is here, in the records. Maybe there is a way to use the ritual to change the terms of the guardianship,” Cas said quietly.

Sam slid his chair over closer to Cas. “Can you go over the terms of the ritual with me while we have the book here in front of us? Talk me through the translation?”

Dean smiled. His two favorite nerds, heads down over a book, working together. “You two do your book thing. I’ve got an idea.”

Ada was in her carefully neat office, working on her computer, half-full cup of coffee cooling on a coaster. “Agent Peart, did you find what you were looking for?” she asked.

Dean sat down in her guest chair and leaned his arms on the edge of her desk. “I’m going to tell you some things that sound crazy, but I want you to hear me out before you decide.” Ada stopped typing and nodded. She looked uneasy. What he was about to say wasn’t going to make it any better.

“Way back when they built this church, the very first priest wanted to keep the church and its people safe. So he buried his dog at the base of the church stairs, then bound the spirit of the dog to protect the church and its people. It doesn’t wake up for little minor things, but back at in the 1900s, we think it killed a man for trying to steal the church poor box. And when those stupid frat boys tried to steal something important and valuable, well, it protected again.”

Ada sat back in her chair and folded her arms over her chest, frowning. “You’re right, that’s crazy.”

“We can show you the earliest church records that talk about burying the dog at the base of the stairs and show you the prayers that they said to bind it,” Dean said. “Why would I lie about something that you can check so easily?”

Her eyes grew wide. “Why are you telling me this?”

“My partner and I, we hunt monsters. We came here because we thought that what attacked those kids was a simple monster. Now that we know it isn’t really a monster, though, we have to decide what to do about it. Someone who actually belongs to this place should be part of that decision,” he explained.

“Shouldn’t it be the Father making this call?” Ada protested.

Dean shrugged. “Loop him in if you want. But you’ve been here 30 years, he’s been here less, so I came to you first. Plus, as you said yourself, you’re the one who takes care of things around here.”

An hour later, Ada brought four mugs of coffee up to the records room, along with a tray of excellent sugar cookies. Dean ate three of them before he realized he should leave at least a few for Cas, who’d never had a cookie she could taste before. Ada noticed his enjoyment. “Father makes them,” she noted, joining them at the library table. 

Strong hands wrapped around her mug, Ada asked, “So show me where they wrote about burying a dog and making a spirit guardian.” Cas walked her through the translations. When Cas finished, Ada shook her head. “And these were the people who said my Ojibwe great-grandparents were backwards savages.” She turned to Dean, her brown eyes solemn and sad. “You’re right. I should take care of this. There’s no reason to bother Father Pederson with this. He would be heartbroken to know that the people who built this church did this to a living creature. I know I am.” 

“Figure out any options?” Dean asked his brother.

“Well, we think we’ve pieced together how to summon the church grim, and maybe how to talk to it. I don’t know if we can re-program it, though,” Sam explained. “If we had enough iron and salt to lay around the grave, we could probably trap it. We might be able to re-work the binding ritual to dismiss it. Worst comes to worst, we dig up the body and salt and burn its bones to put down the spirit.”

Ada rotated her mug over and over, watching the dark liquid eddy. “Has it been aware all this time? Does it know what they did to it?”

“I don’t know,” Sam responded.

“You said we might be able to talk to it. I want to talk to it,” Ada decided.

The three of them and Ada Beach reconvened at midnight on the front steps of the church. Cas drew a sigil on the slates at the base of the stairs in chalk, marking runes in her neat, efficient handwriting. Sam sprinkled holy water over the steps and the walkway, then burned a bowl full of stinky herbs and wood. “Passionflower, white lily, hyssop, spruce, cedar and a holy wafer,” Sam explained, as if he hadn’t just this afternoon dragged Dean to every florist and garden center in the county.

“Whatever, Martha Stewart,” Dean shrugged. “Let’s get summoning, it’s cold out here.” He blew on the hand that wasn’t holding the shotgun, but it didn’t help him feel his fingers.

“This is a spring night in Minnesota, Agent Peart,” Ada said with a laugh. She was wearing a light wool jacket but barely seemed cold at all.

Cas chanted the Latin in a sort of monotone with a flourish at the end. She had a nice voice, Dean noticed. He idly wondered if she knew how to sing.

The wind rose with each syllable. A blue glow rose from the markings on the slates. Something began to solidify within the sigil. A low, throaty canine howl split the night. Ada made a low sound of fear then pressed both of her hands over her mouth. Just in case things went wrong, Dean had his shotgun at the ready, loaded with salt rounds. Sam had an iron crowbar.

The dog was huge and black. Jason Erickson had called it a Rottweiler on steroids. He wasn’t wrong. It reminded Dean uncomfortably of a hellhound, only its eyes were electric blue instead of fiery red. It didn’t growl or fuss. It simply stood there, looking at each of them in turn, waiting.

“Trogen,” Cas said. The dog looked directly at her then sat down, alert and attentive. Dean had no idea what Cas was saying, even what language she was speaking, but the dog seemed to understand. It made a sort of whiny “roo-roo” noise back at her, like this was the most messed up episode of _Scooby-Doo_ ever. 

“How do you – how can you – how can you even talk to a dead dog?” Ada asked nervously.

Cas fumbled, “Uh, I had, um, an unorthodox education.” Fortunately Ada was too spooked to question that. 

“Has he been awake all these years?” Ada asked nervously.

Cas frowned and babbled something at the dog again. It growled and whined back at her. “I think – I think yes, he’s awake and watching all the time. It’s part of what he is,” Cas said.

“My God, that’s awful,” Ada whispered. “Nearly two hundred years, trapped here, constantly awake, all because someone was afraid of the natives? Or worried about some rowdy townspeople?”

Another unintelligible exchange. “Trogen knows what he is. He understands what was done to him, inasmuch as a dog understands these things,” Cas explained. “He is here, watching and protecting, because The Man asked him to.” The capital letters in Cas’s explanation came through loud and clear. 

“You’re talking to it – can you re-program it? Make it non-lethal?” Sam asked.

Cas considered carefully. “I’m not speaking to it in words precisely, just concepts and images. I don’t know that I can be that exact.”

“No,” Ada said. “No, I don’t want to reprogram it or trap it or anything like that. I want to let it free. Let it rest. No one ever should have asked it to do this.”

Dean asked, “Are you sure? That means no more protection.”

Ada was resolute. “I don’t care. This isn’t the frontier any more. We’re a suburban church in Minnesota in 2012. We don’t need this kind of protection. Let the poor thing go.”

Cas nodded then conferred quickly with Sam. Sam leaned over and erased part of the chalk sigil. Cas began to chant in Latin again. Dean recognized parts of it, which sounded almost like an exorcism but not quite, while other bits sounded like a funeral rite. 

The dog’s image wavered, but it kept re-asserting itself. Cas kept chanting. The wind was making a little miniature twister around the sigil, the runes were glowing, but the dog just kept fighting its way back. 

“It doesn’t want to go!” Sam realized. 

Ada stepped up right to the edge of the glowing sigil then extended a hand as if she were letting the dog sniff her. “Trogen. Trogen, you good boy, it’s time to rest. Your work is over. You can go.” The dog laid its huge head against Ada’s palm. Then, slowly, very slowly, the dog faded away, leaving the afterimage of its electric blue eyes, then even that was gone. Only the stink of the flowers and woods Sam had burned remained.

Ada had tears in her eyes as she crossed herself. “I hope that poor creature finds its rest in Heaven.”

“I don’t believe that dogs --” Cas began, but Dean stopped her with a look. There was no need to tell Ada the real truth about Heaven or angels or whatever the hell else Cas was about to say. 

Back at the house, Sam almost immediately retreated to the guest room, claiming a headache. Dean knew that when Sam said “headache” he meant “flashbacks to Hell.” He knew Sam’s hallucinations were worse at the end of a long day, but Sam had insisted on being there when they summoned the church grim. Dean stared at the closed guestroom door and wondered how long Sam was going to be able to hold out.

Cas was sitting at the kitchen table, still wearing the trench coat like it was a security blanket, tapping in to last night’s leftover bourbon. She had a glass poured for Dean before he sat down. She’d seen Sam rubbing his forehead and pushing at the spot on his hand, and, no surprise, she’d figured out exactly what was going on.

“I promised Sam I would fix him,” she said. “And I will. No matter what it takes. No matter what kind of deal I have to make, no matter what it costs me. I will find a way to help him, Dean. I promise.” 

And there it was at last: Castiel the warrior angel, the Cas who stood up to archangels, the Cas who could go toe-to-toe with Dean himself in what Bobby used to call “sheer cussed stubbornness.” But Dean knew better than anyone what went along with that kind of courage and determination. He sipped his bourbon and searched for the right words. He settled on just okay words. “Just don’t . . . ya know, don’t pay everything. I like having you alive.”

“What if that’s the only reason I’m alive again? To atone and fix all the things that I broke?” Cas asked. “My life seems a fair trade.”

It made a weird sort of sense. It was just the sort of shit God would throw at him, to make him have to choose between Cas and Sam. He’d already lost so damn much. No Lisa, no Ben, no normal life. No Ellen to yell at him for not calling. No Jo to be the bratty little sister he never wanted. No more cranky Bobby to grouch at him and love him the way he’d always wanted his father to love him. 

“Let’s just . . . let’s cross that bridge when we get to it,” Dean said. He wasn’t anywhere near drunk enough to say more about the wrench in his gut when he thought about Cas dying again, even if it was to fix Sam, and he wasn’t going to get that drunk tonight or ever.

“As you wish,” Cas answered. She finished her drink, then refilled their glasses. 

Dean leapt at the chance to change the subject. “And, anyway, c’mon, no dogs in Heaven!? What the hell is that about?” 

Cas tried to explain the differences between human souls and animal souls. Dean entertained himself by asking increasingly ridiculous questions and listening to her try to answer them, until she eventually caught on to the game. She chuckled just a little, which made him wonder what it would sound like if she really laughed. There and then he decided it was his mission to find out.

The morning was soon enough to deal with Sam’s hallucinations, life insurance money, Leviathans, and every other damn thing. He had his brother. He had his best friend. It wasn’t perfect. But it was good enough. He’d figure out the rest when he had to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of this story. There's more coming. Think of this one as the first episode.


End file.
